More Cool News on the Open Source Front
I just found out about the OATS project.
OATSoft is dedicated to improving Assistive Technology and computer accessibility through the power of Open Source development techniques. OATSoft makes the best Open Source Assistive Technology Software or OATS easy to find and install. Users and developers are meeting at OATSoft to create better OATS.
It is wonderful to see yet another instance of the assistive technology and open source communities coming together. Through such collaborative efforts, universal design stops being a mere ideal and starts becoming a reality. I definitely want to get involved with the OATS project!
I learned about OATS via Henrik Omma, dubbed Ubuntu’s “Mr. Accessibility,” who blogged about yesterday’s project launch in London. He gives a good overview of where things seem to be and links to some comments and advice he gave the project: all quite good and worth reading. But there’s one thing Henrik said that especially struck me:
As an Open Source enthusiast I’m happy that this project has chosen open source as the vehicle by which to achieve (“better computer access”). But at the same time I acknowledge the fact that for most disabled computer users (and other computer users) the open-sourceness of their tools is not the key factor. I think we should keep in mind that the quality of the result is more important than the license used for those who end up using it.
I agree 100% that the quality of the result is most important and that the license, in and of itself, is irrelevant in the minds of most users. However, while the open-sourceness of the tools is not the key factor today, I do think that will change.
Open source solutions facilitate a move away from the medical model of assistive technology service provision—a model which for so very many reasons is unsatisfactory. Thanks to open source solutions, the user can finally cease being a passive recipient of AT, instead taking on the far more empowering roles of true consumer and active participant. As more and more users with disabilities see all that open source has to offer—far more than mere products!—the open-sourceness of the tools will indeed be a key factor if not the key factor.
The license still won’t matter though. 
Technorati Tags: open source, OATS, FOSS, FLOSS, assistive technology
October 6th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
It annoys me that screen reading software costs an arm and a leg. The market is small, but not that small. Seems to me that the vendors think we all have someone else (read a gov’t agency or an employer with deep pockets) to foot the bill. i should be so lucky.
So any interest in accessibility software shown by the Open Source community is a welcome one as far as I am concerned. And with Open Source, anyone can build on the foundations that already exist which fuels further development down the road. This is a very cool thing and hopefully will result in some innovative, useful, and AFFORDABLE software.
Yeah, it matters how well the software works. If the software isn’t “accessible” due to it’s high price tag however, then it’s functionality is pretty irrelevant.